I can't stop reading the online uproar of people who can't believe Arcade Fire won over Bieber and Gaga. I can't look away. And as much as I love reading the articles, even more so I'm in love with the comments such as:

Quote:

chayy on Feb 14, 3:00 PM said:this band fucking sucks the music industry is in the shitter...im sorry katy perry should have won this award. So whats it gunna take for taylor swift to win the award next year cause she should. If she sells 20 million copies is she gunna lose to some shitty ass band that plays in clubs. WTF happened to music

Also, what a crazy Grammy. Best New Artist pick, Arcade Fire winning album of the year... Black Keys winning it all...

We all hate the Grammys except when we don't, and last night we didn't.

The Grammys always suck, and last night was no exception. The Suburbs is a shitty, boring album. Besides, if the Black Keys beat out Arcade Fire for just alternative albums, how can it then be the best of all albums? Obviously, there's no logic to the Grammys (that's what happens when there's 12,000 idiots voting), so I'm just saying...

i think it's easy to dismiss the grammys, but i dunno, they are fun. they're not life changing.

i agree with rob harvilla:

Quote:

The Grammys are deeply lame, profoundly bizarre, and often laughably out of touch, but they still matter. They still tap into a universe too many rock critics know next to nothing about: music-lovers who aren't rock critics, i.e. 99.5 percent of the world. And last night a band that was only a glint in Pitchfork's eye seven years ago played two songs (can you imagine how awful that strobe-light thing must've been in person? Diddy probably hates them now) at the show's climax, like 15 minutes apart, and picked up the Album of the Year statue in between. The genuine, non-ironic smile on Win Butler's face at the end of the night is hard for me to shake. We are all to some degree playing it cool this morning, casting it off as irony, building our "Who Is Arcade Fire?" Tumblrs to mock the sizable chunk of the population that remains totally bewildered by this. But I think that Twitter torrent of OH SHITs from our ordinarily cynical brethren was genuine, yes. The WE MADE IT stuff is trickier, satirizing the Slate piece everyone assumes will arise out of this in advance, but that's at least partly defensive sarcasm. Let's neither overplay nor underplay this. Barbra Streisand presented a Grammy to Arcade Fire last night. Allow yourself to acknowledge that that's pretty incredible.

I agree with you (and everyone else) that this is the mainstream music industry sinking rather than the underground rising -- the Decemberists are still your 2011 one-week sales leaders, after all, and maybe we'll be wringing our hands about them a year from now. But the real WE MADE IT metric is very, very simple: The Suburbs sales bump next week. If it hits #1 or anywhere close, you have the crossover we're all now pretending is a big joke. But if nothing happens, then it's just a joke, a dog whistle that only "we" could hear, that the rest of the country ignored. There are advantages to both, advantages, advantages.

Re: the show itself, I'll say this: I prefer the Grammys out-of-touchness, their jarring clashes between pandering to old people and pandering to teenagers (was that 20-minute Aretha nod at the onset specifically designed to drive away anyone under 25?), their profound racial discomfort (Guru's snub is disappointing but not very shocking, the Lady Antebellum/Teddy Pendergrass thing is more of both), their awards-granting schizophrenia, to the MTV Music Awards' empty nihilism and thirst for "controversy." I feel ridiculous watching the Grammys, but I don't feel disgusting, and I savor that difference. I enjoyed the hell out of the show itself, all three and a half hours, the good-good and bad-good stuff alike (Mick Jagger the former, Katy Perry the latter), and though the real-time Twitter backlash is a crucial part of that experience for me, I'm on board with it, I'm a fan, I will be back, and so will you, because now you think Anything Can Happen. I'm giddy this morning less because I'm flattered they're finally acknowledging the indie-centric universe I mostly live in, and more because I'm profoundly amused at how awkward they look doing it, and how awkward we look acknowledging that they did it.

The Grammys are deeply lame, profoundly bizarre, and often laughably out of touch, but they still matter. They still tap into a universe too many rock critics know next to nothing about: music-lovers who aren't rock critics, i.e. 99.5 percent of the world. And last night a band that was only a glint in Pitchfork's eye seven years ago played two songs (can you imagine how awful that strobe-light thing must've been in person? Diddy probably hates them now) at the show's climax, like 15 minutes apart, and picked up the Album of the Year statue in between. The genuine, non-ironic smile on Win Butler's face at the end of the night is hard for me to shake. We are all to some degree playing it cool this morning, casting it off as irony, building our "Who Is Arcade Fire?" Tumblrs to mock the sizable chunk of the population that remains totally bewildered by this. But I think that Twitter torrent of OH SHITs from our ordinarily cynical brethren was genuine, yes. The WE MADE IT stuff is trickier, satirizing the Slate piece everyone assumes will arise out of this in advance, but that's at least partly defensive sarcasm. Let's neither overplay nor underplay this. Barbra Streisand presented a Grammy to Arcade Fire last night. Allow yourself to acknowledge that that's pretty incredible.

I agree with you (and everyone else) that this is the mainstream music industry sinking rather than the underground rising -- the Decemberists are still your 2011 one-week sales leaders, after all, and maybe we'll be wringing our hands about them a year from now. But the real WE MADE IT metric is very, very simple: The Suburbs sales bump next week. If it hits #1 or anywhere close, you have the crossover we're all now pretending is a big joke. But if nothing happens, then it's just a joke, a dog whistle that only "we" could hear, that the rest of the country ignored. There are advantages to both, advantages, advantages.

Re: the show itself, I'll say this: I prefer the Grammys out-of-touchness, their jarring clashes between pandering to old people and pandering to teenagers (was that 20-minute Aretha nod at the onset specifically designed to drive away anyone under 25?), their profound racial discomfort (Guru's snub is disappointing but not very shocking, the Lady Antebellum/Teddy Pendergrass thing is more of both), their awards-granting schizophrenia, to the MTV Music Awards' empty nihilism and thirst for "controversy." I feel ridiculous watching the Grammys, but I don't feel disgusting, and I savor that difference. I enjoyed the hell out of the show itself, all three and a half hours, the good-good and bad-good stuff alike (Mick Jagger the former, Katy Perry the latter), and though the real-time Twitter backlash is a crucial part of that experience for me, I'm on board with it, I'm a fan, I will be back, and so will you, because now you think Anything Can Happen. I'm giddy this morning less because I'm flattered they're finally acknowledging the indie-centric universe I mostly live in, and more because I'm profoundly amused at how awkward they look doing it, and how awkward we look acknowledging that they did it.

It was fitting to return to the Grammys with a 13 year old in the room. The last time I thought they were for real I was probably 9 years old and I think Billy Joel won album of the year for 52nd Street (so, understandably I was already suspicious, then).

I can only watch the industry suck its own dick for so long with prurient interest. They look very excited about it though. I'll give it another 30 years.

Thumbs up for the Black Keys.

As far as the Arcade Fire goes, I think you might be able to make a link between the disappearance of the protagonist in Eddie and the Cruisers and their recent emergence. I think that's Eddie.

It's far more plausible than 14 art students getting together to reconstruct Eddie and the Cruisers. Someone give me the real scoop.

_________________People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.

and Yeah- Merge is a great label but I honestly can't make a valid evaulation of Arcade Fire; there's just too much proactive interference in the rock and roll concsiousness that, for whatever reason, Arcade Fire doesn't permeate (and trying to achieve tabula rasa via pbr saturation in order to allow a new artist a fair shake was an idiotic idea that brought home about as much bacon as slamming a bowl of colon blow with a few shots of nyquil).

I returned to their first record the other night and it doesn't suck. I'm just not moved one way or the other; which is bizarre considering the emotion they appear to elicit. It's like, "Yeah there's a band over there. Sounds like something a lot of people would like." Maybe they're poets and I'm dead inside.

So, yeah: Go Merge, TNV for 2012 and down with the big man.

_________________People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.

Arcade Fire had the final slot on the Grammys as the ratings are low at the end of the broadcast. It really is that simple. We were one of the least known acts on the bill for a network audience. Don’t you think I wanted a better slot for the band?

The reason we got a second song was also simple. No big plot. We had no guarantee of air time, but it was simply to play out the end credits of the show, if we’re even had that much. The show never runs like clockwork to an exact time so the end is always loose. As it happened, the broadcast was covered by sponsors messages and the end credits.

For the Grammys international broadcast our main performance, along with that of Mumford and Sons and the Avett Brothers was completely cut from the show. Our end title performance was bastardised because they cut out ads/sponsor messages completely. It was a bit of a farce. You’d think we’d be given a little more after the fact.

Arcade Fire deserved the win this year. They made the best album. If the award was names "Album Sales Of The Year" award, there would be no discussion. Stoutes letter was nice piece of self publicity. Did he see Kanye’s tweets when we won and the praise he gave us?? He needs to tune in. Eminem made a big selling album but it was far from being his best work. Katy Perry made a big pop record that simply didn’t have weight or credibility. Gaga’s repackage, great album but it was a repackage of the main release. I think everyone felt it was going to be Lady Antebellum’s moment having won 5 out of 6 awards to that point. We all felt that way too.

I’m proud of this band and what they have achieved. We didn’t lobby any organisation for this nor did the band play the game. We paid our own overhead to do the event, thus the lack of on stage gimmicks. No label picked up the tab.

Arcade Fire are now one of the biggest live acts in the world. It’s not all about record sales. It’s about making great records and it’s about building a loyal fan base. Ther band make great albums, they’re not a radio driven singles band. On top of that, they own their own masters and copyrights and are in complete control of their own destiny. Things couldn’t be better.